Final Verdict:
The 6 Best PTO Tracking Software

Written by Asim Qureshi
By Asim Qureshi, CEO Jibble

As a CEO of a time tracking software company I need to know what my competitors are up to. That means I’m often researching about and/or playing around with their products, you know, it’s part of the job. I also know which of our competitors are highly-regarded in the industry as people talk, word gets around. Here, I share some findings of my research or conversations, giving credit to those competitors where credit is due. I hope it helps you make the right decision.

Overview

PTO management can be a real headache, leaving you feeling like you’re lost in a maze of confusion, missed deadlines, and potential office conflicts. Luckily there’s a solution to save the day – PTO tracking software. PTO tracking software doesn’t just make your life easier, it works wonders for your company culture too. When your employees know their well-deserved time off is being handled efficiently, they can enjoy their breaks with peace of mind. 

So, if you’re on a quest for the ultimate PTO management solution, I’ve got your back with a selection of the 6 best PTO tracking software. I know what you need to look at. Pricing, UI, stability, customer support, integrations, and, perhaps most importantly, how it all comes together for a user or team. Ok, so let’s get cracking…

What are the 6 Best PTO Tracking Software for 2023?

The definitive list

1. Jibble

Jibble first? Of course! Sure, I am the CEO of this PTO tracking software, but I genuinely believe that it’s the best one out there and I will justify it. Jibble is a comprehensive PTO management software that revolutionizes the way businesses handle employee time off. With Jibble’s advanced automation, tracking and managing absences, holiday requests, and sick days becomes a breeze. Jibble has a user-friendly self-service portal for employees, granting them the ability to request time off and check their remaining leave balances effortlessly.

What sets Jibble apart is its seamless integration with the time and attendance tracking feature. Who needs vacation surprises? With our time tracking software, employees can request time off and their timesheets automatically update, and managers get real-time visibility into attendance records. You should really forget about one-size-fits-all leave policies as Jibble can accommodate all kinds of policies tailored to each business’s requirements.

Get ready to embark on a fun journey with our intuitive interface and automated workflows, where managing leave feels more like a joyride than a chore. Jibble creates a streamlined leave management experience and you’ll be amazed at how effortlessly you can handle PTO like a pro. 

Don’t just take my word for it – yes, Jibble is our product, but it stands out as the highest-rated app across reputable review platforms such as Capterra, GetApp, G2, App Store, and Play Store

What Do Users Like about Jibble?

  • Free
  • Easy to use 
  • Affordable with a stacked free version
  • Accurate time-tracking due to facial recognition and GPS tracking
  • Excellent customer support
  • Feature-rich software

What Do Users Not Like about Jibble?

  • The sudden urge in employee productivity can certainly catch you by surprise 

What are Jibble’s Key Features?

  • Automated leave tracking
  • Customizable leave types
  • Leave approval workflows
  • Real-time leave balances
  • Team availability calendar
  • Leave analytics and reporting
  • Mobile and desktop compatibility 

Ratings

  • PlayStore: 4.6/5
  • Software Advice: 5/5
  • AppStore: 4.8/5
  • Capterra: 4.8/5
  • GetApp: 4.8/5


The obvious advantage that Jibble has is that it’s a free PTO Management Software. Start using Jibble’s PTO tracking software right now.

Leave approval with Jibble web and mobile app

2. Bindle

Bindle PTO tracking software is your ultimate solution for effortless time-off management. With Bindle, you can bid farewell to forgotten updates on shared calendars as it automatically logs and tracks time off directly in your team’s preferred calendar, seamlessly integrating with Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, Apple’s Calendar app, and even Slack.

Say goodbye to the hassle of manually tracking vacation balances. Bindle offers a self-service feature that gives your staff real-time access to their vacation balance. They can check their remaining time-off at any moment without bothering you with inquiries. It’s as easy as a few clicks in the Bindle app.

Managers will also appreciate the smart PTO notifications. When staff members submit vacation requests, managers are instantly notified, providing all the necessary context to make informed decisions promptly. The approval or rejection process is streamlined, with immediate notifications sent to the staff, and balances and calendars automatically updated.

Bindle’s sophisticated vacation and PTO calculator ensures that you always have accurate and up-to-date information in one centralized location. Plus, exporting data for manual reports is a breeze, requiring just a few clicks within the vacation tracking software.

In summary, Bindle PTO tracking software revolutionizes your time-off management, automating updates, providing self-service access to balances, sending smart notifications, and offering accurate information at your fingertips. 

What Do Users Like about Bindle?

  • Value for money
  • Good customer support
  • Functionality

What Do Users Not Like about Bindle?

  • The administrator reporting features are limited
  • Unable to generate comprehensive leave summaries for individual employees
  • No option to see a month by month calendar
  • The overall visual aspect of the software is a little plain
  • No way to create blackout dates that staff are not permitted to take off
  • Delay in posting time off to the google calendar, users expect it to be immediate

What are Bindle’s Key Features?

  • Flexible reporting
  • Automatic balance tracking
  • Highly configurable

Ratings

  • GetApp: 4.6/5
  • Software Advice: 4.48/5
  • Capterra: 4.7/5

Employee PTO balance displayed on Bindle

3. Planleave

Introducing Planleave, a great solution for streamlined PTO and vacation management. Planleave empowers businesses to effortlessly track and manage employee leaves and vacations with ease. Teams and managers can handle time-off requests and various leave types, including vacations, sick leave, and bank holidays, all within the Planleave platform.

Seamlessly integrated with popular communication platforms like Slack and calendar apps such as Outlook, Google Calendar, or your preferred calendar app, Planleave provides real-time visibility into employee availability. Stay informed about who’s taking time off and easily maintain well-organized leave schedules. With Planleave, PTO management becomes a breeze, ensuring a smooth workflow for your organization.

What Do Users Like about Planleave?

  • Ease of use
  • Good customer service
  • Value for money
  • Ability to customize leave policies

What Do Users Not Like about Planleave?

  • No mobile app
  • Users find the UI of Planleave to be cluttered and buggy
  • Reporting functionality is limited

What are Planleave’s Key Features?

  • Customizable leave types and settings
  • Reporting
  • Approval process control
  • Leave policy management
  • Self-service portal

Ratings

  • GetApp: 4.8/5
  • Capterra: 4.8/5
  • G2: 4.5/5

Types of leaves for employees with customizable approval policies

4. Absence

Absence.io is a comprehensive PTO tracking software that simplifies vacation and absence management for organizations. With absence.io, you can easily manage and approve employee absences through a straightforward approval process. The software allows for efficient organization of employees into teams and departments, providing a clear overview of the workforce structure. Each employee has an individual profile where user roles, authorizations, teams, departments, allowances, absences, recent activities, and personnel documents can be managed.

Customizable individual work schedules enable mapping of part-time hours and non-working days for up to four weeks in advance. The software also facilitates the management of multiple locations and provides a substitution feature for absences. It includes a worldwide holiday database as well as the ability to manage custom holidays and mandatory leave.

Absence.io integrates with personal calendars, and allows users to adjust allowances, set rules, and receive email notifications. The software generates various reports and offers an intuitive dashboard overview.  In summary, I found it to be a comprehensive solution for PTO tracking, absence management, and employee scheduling.

What Do Users Like about Absence?

  • Web and app usage
  • Intuitive interface and ease of use
  • Helps track team attendance
  • Streamlines approval within teams
  • Easy to view reports

What Do Users Not Like about Absence?

  • Date styles and calendar settings follow German conventions
  • Complex to modify a request 
  • Some of the configuration for shift work is time consuming to implement
  • Difficult to navigate around the settings for different work schedules and part-time employees
  • UI overall can be improved, especially for the mobile view

What are Absence’s Key Features?

  • Reporting/Analytics
  • Vacation tracker
  • Controllable via browser, mobile app and mobile terminal
  • Worldwide holidays
  • Available in 7 languages

Ratings

  • GetApp: 4.7/5
  • Capterra: 4.7/5
  • G2: 4.5/5
  • SoftwareAdvice: 4.67/5

Dashboard view of leave management with Absence

 

5. Calamari

Calamari is a comprehensive online PTO tracking system that simplifies the calculation of paid time off (PTO) and optimizes the administration of holidays for your organization. Seamlessly integrated with leading platforms such as Google Workspace, Slack, and Jira, the software provides a smooth and efficient solution for managing employee absences. By utilizing shared absence calendars, you can easily track employee vacations, days off, and remote work.

The synchronization capability with various calendars, including Google Workspace Calendar, Office 365, iOS, Apple, and others, ensures accurate and real-time updates for time-off requests. Their advanced automation feature handles entitlement calculations based on your PTO policy, considering factors such as hire date and employee attributes.

Calamari’s leave management software can effectively handle all types of absences, including PTO, sick leave, maternity leave, vacations, personal days, and more. The approval process can be executed by regular employees, supervisors, or designated substitutes. For board members who do not require approval, Calamari allows for self-acceptance of applications. Managing vacations for globally distributed teams is made easy, as you can set up separate time-off policies and absence types for each location, which ensures centralized management of employee and time-off data within a single system.

What I found great is that Calamari offers a user-friendly interface available in five languages: English, German, Polish, French, and Spanish. This allows users from diverse language backgrounds to navigate and utilize the system effectively.

What Do Users Like about Calamari?

  • Excellent customer support
  • Intuitive user interface
  • Suitable for companies operating in multiple countries and locations
  • Seamless integration with Slack and various other software platforms

What Do Users Not Like about Calamari?

  • It doesn’t have a desktop app
  • Improvements needed in the user interface for smoother navigation
  • Inability to edit time-off requests, necessitating the deletion and resubmission of the entire request, along with manager approval for cancellation
  • Insufficient manuals, guides, and videos for system setup

What are Calamari’s Key Features?

  • Accounting integration
  • Time tracking using QR Codes
  • Tracking work time automatically with iBeacon technology
  • Displaying employee attendance list

Ratings

  • GetApp: 4.5/5
  • Capterra: 4.7/5
  • G2: 4.5/5
  • PlayStore: 5/5
  • App Store: 4/5

Calendar view of absence requests on Calamari

6. LeaveMonitor

Introducing LeaveMonitor, an intuitive and user-friendly cloud-based solution for managing your PTO requirements. With LeaveMonitor, organizations can effortlessly handle different types of leave, including annual leave, sick leave, parental leave, sabbatical leave, bereavement leave, and compassionate leave, among others. Getting started is a breeze, as the platform offers a simple registration process without the need for credit card information. LeaveMonitor prioritizes personalization, allowing you to customize the platform with your corporate logo and tailor it to your company’s specific leave types. To make implementation even smoother, their support team provides a complimentary setup service, assisting with trial account setup for any number of users.

LeaveMonitor empowers you to efficiently manage employees across multiple offices and regions. The platform offers various access levels to ensure appropriate data viewing permissions, and it supports multiple languages, allowing staff to use the platform in their preferred language. Moreover, LeaveMonitor offers flexible PTO setups, enabling you to add company-specific leave types as needed. With LeaveMonitor, you gain a comprehensive solution for effectively managing staff leave, all while enjoying a user-friendly experience and seamless integration with your company’s branding.

What Do Users Like about LeaveMonitor?

  • Ease of use
  • Multilingual and multi-regional support
  • Approval process is quick and easy
  • Ability to generate detailed reports
  • Graphical representation gives clear picture and status of the attendance

What Do Users Not Like about LeaveMonitor?

  • No automated mails for employees when their leaves are about to expire
  • Start date of annual leave has to be selected through a calendar widget
  • Poor translation when used in another language
  • No option to set a daily quota of max. number of people who can apply for leave on the same day
  • Not available on Google Play as an app for Android 

What are LeaveMonitor’s Key Features?

  • Customizable reports
  • Multi-location 
  • Employees profile
  • Third party integrations

Ratings

  • GetApp: 4.9/5
  • Capterra: 4.8/5
  • G2: 4.5/5

Dashboard for managing time off and employee leave on LeaveMonitor